


The Slow Arrow

by hallahart



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Non-Violent Death, Old Age, One Shot, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallahart/pseuds/hallahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas needs the Anchor. But he can wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Slow Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> It's Valentine's day so, here, have this depressing-ass fic! Written for a prompt I can't find now, oops.

 

Like flowers, mortals bloom and fade in a season. A breath. A blink.

She’s not surprised to see him, and when she’s finished shooing out her family (redheads and green eyes, fierce, loving—) there’s nothing in her gaze but gentleness.  He had expected otherwise-- anger, dismissal, perhaps tears-- but, as ever, she surprises him.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” she says, smiling.

He’s imagined this meeting for decades, but now that it’s come, he’s at a loss for words. Her eyes are the same, just as clear and bright as that first morning high in the Frostbacks. Her red hair is shot through with white, braids falling over thin shoulders, a sweaty pallor on her brow and a faint trembling in her hands. He never thought he’d see her frail.

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he says, because she doesn’t have time for him to be coy. He kneels beside her and grasps her hands in his. Her skin is thin and deeply lined, her palms rough with old scars he remembers well.

“Solas,” she says, eyes closing for a moment. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“And yours.” He’s heard her in his dreams a thousand times, but it has never compared. There is so much to say, and no time to say it. And what an irony that is, after all these years of silence, after all the lies he once told her.

"Handsome as ever," she says, eyes twinkling.

He barks out a laugh, surprising himself. Her smile, full of unguarded pleasure, is still beautiful.

“I thought you might be too late,” she says, a grin quirking at her mouth. “But you always did have a knack for timing.”

His vision blurs and her smile softens, settling into the deep lines around her eyes. “I waited— I wanted you to have—“ he can’t finish. _I wanted you to have a life._

“I know,” she says, and squeezes his hand. How very like her, to comfort _him_ when she’s the one dying. “I’ve had a good one, as far as lives go. And this is a good death.”

She has all he’d hoped for her— a full life, a family. Things he could never have given her. He can’t regret that. He won’t allow himself that luxury.

He takes her left hand in his and feels the old scar there, the old warmth. The Anchor’s only job has been to keep her alive, these long years since the last rift was closed. It hums for him, still, after all this time. When he was a different man, the nearness of its power would have thrilled him. No longer.

For a moment, he lets himself doubt. Would that the children and grandchildren waiting outside were theirs. Would that he’d had the courage to stand beside her, all these years. Would that he was not what he was. Would that his heart had never wrenched in his chest at the sight of her. Would that it didn’t still now.

_Harden your heart_ , he’d told her once. What a fool.

They speak of old times, old battles, of lost friends, her family, his travels, his past. But the conversation strains her and soon, too soon, her energy fades, voice cracking. She looks at him, familiar determination on her face, and his lips graze her forehead with a kiss.

The Anchor flickers at the first brush of his power and he meets her eyes, the question unspoken. Even now, he will not do this without her permission. She nods, unhesitating.

“Will you find me?” Her voice is steady.

Her spirit will exist beyond the Veil, but it will not be the same. She will not know him.

But he will know her.

He will know her across a crowded room, across the seas, across the world. He will know her a hundred years from now. A thousand.

“Always,” he says, and finds it true.

 


End file.
